Two Canadian brothers find each other for Remembrance Day

This weekend, thanks to Remembrance Day ceremonies half a world away, Andy Brisebois is meeting face-to-face with a brother who, until quite recently, he didn’t know he had.

A half-brother, actually. But that technicality doesn’t matter.

They’ve already Skyped and chatted several times by phone about their father, a Canadian killed in the Korean war.

Yet they only found out about each other this past summer through a news article.

In July, Postmedia News told the story of Leo Demay, now 60, and how he first discovered the identity of his birth father, Andre Adelard Regimbald. As a young man, Regimbald had been engaged to a Quebecer named Helene Sabourin, whom he planned to marry when he returned from the front lines in Korea. The night before he left for war, they consummated their relationship. But Regimbald was killed — by a missile to the back of the head during artillery shelling — on the first day he saw action, one of Canada’s 516 casualties in the three-year war.

Leo Demay

Sabourin, pregnant by Regimbald, eventually gave up their son for adoption; the mores of the time didn’t allow her to keep him. He grew up Leo Demay, living in Saskatchewan and British Columbia.

When Demay was in his 50s, Sabourin contacted him, and he first learned about his Korean war-vet father. Demay travelled to Korea to see his father’s grave, fell in love with the country and made arrangements to move there. Today, he’s the director of foreign affairs at the Korean War Cemetery in Busan, South Korea, where he keeps a careful watch over his father’s grave.

Fast forward to this past summer and the 60th anniversary of the Korean War armistice.

Brisebois, 64, who lives in Ottawa, arrived home from his day job at a hardware store in the Little Italy area. His wife, Barbara, had saved the news story about Demay and Regimbald that had appeared that day in the Ottawa Citizen.

Then “I looked down below and saw this guy, Leo Demay: my half-brother.”

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Andy Brisebois had always suspected he was adopted; when he was 12, he finally asked his mother and only after his adoptive parents had passed away did he research his origins. He had been born Pierre Joseph Andre on Feb. 20, 1949, the child of Cecille Labelle and Andre Adelard Regimbald. The details are sketchy but he believes his father — who was only 16 when he was born — fled after he found out about the pregnancy. His mother eventually sent Andy to an orphanage, where he lived until 1952. Then he was adopted.

Once he began his research, through ads in newspapers in Gatineau, Que., Brisebois found an uncle — his birth father’s brother. Now he knew his birth parents’ names. He also met a few of his half-siblings — children his birth mother had when she married later in life — but they had little interest in each other.

Andre Brisebois was adopted shortly after he was born. His mother gave him up for adoption after his father, Andre Adelard Regimbald, was killed on his first day on the front line in Korea. He didn’t know he had other siblings until recently, when he read a Postmedia News story in the paper about another man, Leo Demay, whose father was also Regimbald.

No such distance – at least, emotionally – exists for him and Demay. Upon reading about Demay in the paper, Brisebois reached him quickly through email. Demay phoned him six times the day he received the email before they actually connected.

When they finally did, they spoke for more than three hours straight. They haven’t stopped.

“We speak, if not every night, every second night,” Brisebois says.

They’ve discovered they have a few things in common besides a father. They share a love of the outdoors, canoeing particularly, and sports, including basketball, tennis, swimming, horseback riding. “I feel like I’ve known him all my life,” Brisebois says.

He’s getting to know Demay directly this weekend. Brisebois is travelling to South Korea, funded by Korea’s Ministry of Patriots and Veteran Affairs (his wife will foot her own bill) for Remembrance Day. “We’re (Leo and Andy) going to spend about four days together. I’m going to meet him, and also to see my father’s grave,” Brisebois says.

Looking through his photo albums, Brisebois pulls out a picture. “This is a photo of his first grave, shortly after he died,” he says, looking at a photo of a cross once given to him by his father’s sister, Theresa. Now, on Remembrance Day, 2013, he’ll see the formal stone and its inscription:

As for Demay, when the two finally meet, he will see his father’s original medals, which the family had kept and given to Brisebois in the 1990s.

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On a recent evening — morning, Korea time — the two half brothers chatted by Skype about their coming reunion. Demay sat in his living room, enjoying a cigarette and a coffee. In Ottawa, Brisebois sat in the tiny study of his two-bedroom apartment, his wife Barbara on a nearby love seat. Asked what they’ll do when they finally meet, the brothers answered quickly.

“Give a hug,” said Brisebois, with a warm smile.

“A hug and a handshake, I think that’s pretty much first on the list,” said Demay.